The Feldman File covers eBooks, publishing, new media, Internet services, consumer electronics and salsa dancing. (Okay, not salsa dancing, but it'll be interesting to see how many people looking for information on salsa dancing end up here.)

Just so everyone knows that AT&T means business, the Hallmark Channel and Hallmark Movie Channel have been off U-Verse since August 30th, and there's no word of if or when they're going to be restored.

As service providers knock more and more cable channels off of their systems to save money, they lower the value of their services to current and potential subscribers. There are a handful of channels that subscribers would likely change service providers in order to keep--the problem is that they're different channels for every subscriber. I'm a Comcast subscriber, and if they lost ESPN, I wouldn't blink, but if they lost Discovery, I'd be on the phone to DirecTV or Dish to schedule a hookup, which leads to the other problem--every service provider is playing the same brinksmanship games. I could switch service providers and still end up losing Discovery.

The inevitable future for all but a handful of cable networks is monthly subscriptions through Apple TV, Google TV, Roku, Boxee and the like. That's the only way to insure that they can reliably reach a critical mass of households.